Numbers 13:4

Summary

Numbers 13:4 opens the list of the twelve men sent to scout the land of Canaan, introducing it with the formula "and these [are] their names." It then gives the first entry: the representative of the tribe of Reuben, Shammua ("Shammua", H8051G) son of Zaccur ("Zaccur", H2139G).

Key words

• 'Elleh ("these", H0428) — demonstrative particle that opens the list, pointing forward to the names about to be enumerated.
• shemotam ("names of them", H8034) — feminine plural noun in construct form with a 3rd person masculine plural suffix ("their"), literally "names-of-them," binding the list to the group just referenced.
• maTeh ("tribe of", H4294H) — masculine singular noun in construct state, meaning it cannot stand alone and requires the following proper name (Re'uven) to complete its sense: "tribe of Reuben."
• ben ("son of", H1121A) — construct singular noun linking Shammua to his father Zaccur, the standard Hebrew patronymic pattern "PN1 son of PN2."
• Re'uven ("Reuben", H7205) — proper name marking the tribal affiliation of the first scout named.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built on a construct chain typical of genealogical or administrative lists: the demonstrative 'Elleh announces that a list follows, and shemotam (a construct noun plus suffix) specifies that this list consists of "their names." The preposition le ("for", H9005) attached to maTeh introduces the tribal affiliation for each entry — "for the tribe of Reuben" — before the personal name and patronymic are given. This construction (le + tribe name, followed by personal name + ben + father's name) is the template repeated for each of the twelve scouts throughout the passage, so verse 4 establishes the syntactic pattern that the rest of the list follows. The construct forms (shemotam, maTeh, ben) all depend grammatically on what follows them, creating a chain of tightly bound phrases rather than independent clauses.

Differences between versions

The Greek text supplied for this reference (LXXSWETE) and the Latin (VULCLEM) do not correspond to the Hebrew content of 13:4. Instead, both describe Moses sending out the leaders from the wilderness of Paran — content that in the Hebrew numbering appears in verse 3, where the list of names is then introduced. This reflects a difference in verse alignment between the traditions represented here: the material found in Hebrew v.3 (Moses's dispatch of the leaders) is what appears under the LXX/Vulgate citation for "13:4," while the Hebrew v.4 text given above (the start of the name list) is not matched by the Greek or Latin lines provided.